Wall Street Protests—Six Suggestions for an Agenda.
To stand a chance of getting what you want, you have to ask for it. Disorganized expressions of anger may be useful recruiting tools, but rarely produce targeted results. I applaud the Wall Street protests and see in them, the possibility of “an American Spring”. What I don’t see is an agenda, or list of demands. Without this, how will we be able to measure success or even know how much we've won. Before the Congress that enable the current Wall Street offers us useless hearings, perhaps we should decide what we want and try to enlist supporters. To that end, I’d like to offer six suggestions for discussion about a possible agenda.
Fully Financed Federal Elections.
The root of the problem is that money has overwhelmed the electoral process. The people with the most of it are the corporate sector (currently paying about 60% of election costs). The flows of money they make available through lobbying and job-offers to skews public policy in their direction. It also attracts the greediest, self-selecting leaders to Congress who can't wait to be rewarded for possessing the keys to the public Treasury. Removing the potential for such rewards would be a big-step in changing the long term dynamics of Washington.
Free Air-Time for Qualified Candidates.
Our political discourse has been coarsened and propagandized by 30 second “issue” spots, highly researched in focus groups to find out the buzz-words that will attract voters. The keys to the public treasury are so valuable, that candidates will raise millions from those in whose interest it is to control them. Much of that money is spent on advertising. We could opt for a European system:
Eight to twelve weeks of campaigns
paid for by the people.
All candidates appear in unstructured debates on every net-work.
People can pay attention for that limited length of time, and get multiple opportunities to see the candidates up against one another.
Ban Corporate Contributions.
Employees of corporations are citizens and have a constitutional right to vote and donate to elections. Why should we allow a corporation, whose only mandate is to increase wealth for shareholders, to use their wealth to skew public policy? We need to reverse the Citizens United decision which allows unregulated amounts of money to be donated by corporations----even foreign corporations.
Renew Glass-Steagall and Regulate Wall Street.
From World War II until the Clinton administration, banks were forbidden to speculate with investors money, and kept separate from investment houses. That and other regulations kept the American market the safest in the world. As money gradually captured the Congress and the regulatory agencies, the limits and restrictions were removed, with the disastrous results we are all living through today. We need rules to play baseball and basket-ball and we need rules to run an economy.
Paper Ballots, Counted by Hand.
Nothing in our democracy is secure without the vote. Nothing in the Constitution requires that votes be tabulated in time for the evening news. Electronic voting machines have been demonstrated to be easy to corrupt and the results are unreliable. Use them in cases of certifiable infirmity. Otherwise, go back to tried and true, paper ballots, with observers from all parties counting.
Tax on Wall Street Transactions
A reader named VClib sent the following that I wish I'd considered:
"a transaction tax on every Wall Street trade. I would not be specific on the amount of the tax, but just stay focused on a transaction tax. It could be an important source of federal tax revenue and curtail the computerized trading that is looking for a 1/10 of 1% gain with a purchase and sale within a few seconds."
Human beings are not perfect and never will be, consequently they function better in systems that have rules. The strong will prey on the weak unless they’re held in check. Sociopaths will cruise the social order like sharks unless they’re checked. Corporations will assume control of their regulators unless they’re blocked. This principle, and these five simple agenda items could go a long way towards long term change. They would attract a different sort of person to politics, just as the European single-payer health care attracts a different sort of person to be a doctor. There is no fool-proof system ever devised to regulate human beings, but blunting the corrosive power of money in our system would go a long way towards righting the most current egregious wrongs.
Others may have additions, though I would suggest keeping the list short and terse to make it easier for lots of people to read.